A collection of random but precious tidbits!

Ok, so most of the precious tidbits have one thing in common: Bear! 

He's gotten very serious about his bubble blowing skills!

He was very mesmerized by the first fire in our wood stove that he got to observe!

I gave him a phone just momentarily so he and Jason could "work" side by side on their electronics.

He enjoys conversing with our collection of stuffed animals and puppets.

Seeing him enjoying Nora's blue seat does a number on my heart.

And having a sleeping little one in a pack on my front as I do things around the house brings back oh so many memories!!

Ok, so before I run completely out of steam for scrapbooking!

I'm enjoying making our favorite cookie recipe with Tangly Woods' amaranth flour. It's time to grind some more corn flour but in the meantime this has been an excellent alternative!

Jason planted out some hazelnuts in the seed cage and we know that at least one toad is alive and well!

The second to last chicken butchering of the year is now done (with one more smaller one to go). And Jason had the brilliant idea of making ponhoss with chicken for the first time. It will, from here on out, be my favorite way to eat chicken giblets. Delicious!

I'm pretty confident Jason would have been out there butchering with a head lamp if Tala had not been out there helping him for much of the day!

The girls helped with the chicken selection the day before, which they enjoy much more than the butchering day. This giant is a breeder!

As the garden tasks lessen dramatically, both of us are getting to do some much needed housekeeping tasks. For me it has been things like helping our rapidly growing kids assess their clothing or assist them in "resetting" their bedroom space, which was no longer serving them well. For Jason it was a day of going through the seed cabinet, pulling out old stuff and tucking in the new.

In closing a short newsflash: we are REALLY hoping that 2024 will be "the year of the pavilion" at Tangly Woods. Design work is underway (that's what Jason is up to right now as I finish up this post). It's been awhile since Jason has worked on something this big and I'd almost forgotten how cute he is when his brain is working on a design. It's like I can just see the wheels turning and sometimes he has this faraway look and I just know he is working out some kink in the plan. 

To not disappoint anyone, here's two sky pictures! I'm starting to think a day of blogging without sharing any sky pictures might be akin to me going on a walk with a friend and not mentioning a single podcast I'm listening to. Unheard of!

Our time with Tala! Too short...very sweet!

As I write this, Alida is on facebook messenger with Tala in the other room playing Rook online together. Tala is in an airport on one of her LONG layovers! She has a grueling return itinerary. I'm not sure how her brain is working enough to play Rook after not sleeping much more than an hour in the 30+ hours that have passed since I dropped her off at the bus station yesterday morning! 

10 days was not a very long visit, but we packed the time full of game playing, walks, delicious meals, sleepovers, hugs and more hugs, the aforementioned leaf raking, and some very sweet connecting and courageous conversations. It went very fast and was particularly hard to say goodbye not knowing when we'll next be together in the same place. Hopefully the memories will sustain us and we'll have to be grateful for virtual communication options in the meantime!

This foursome didn't waste any time breaking out the Dutch Blitz cards! I don't know how many rounds they played, but it was A LOT! There's no use trying to get a picture that isn't blurry as their hands are flying too fast!

I got in on a few other games, but must be honest and admit that I am still unable to be a good sport when I lose at Upwords! Sigh!! 

Tala trusted me again near her hair with a scissors and I sent off 10 inches of it yesterday to Maggie's Wigs 4 Kids. 

We shared some pretty yummy meals around the table together. Tala cooked two of my favorite meals that she makes for us. So good!!

I was very glad for a low key day just the 6 of us together on Thanksgiving Day (or Thankstaking or Day of Mourning or Thanksgrieving or many other possible framings of this "holiday"). I love the idea of a holiday (time away from work and normal routines) that focuses on gratitude and being with loved ones, but I would really find it more possible to enter into that practice if it wasn't connected to a very twisted telling of the history of this country. But, it being our last day together the 6 of us and our last meal around the table together, there was a definite focus on savoring our minutes together.

The wishbone just would not break, but I'm pretty sure more than one of us shared a wish that we'd be gathered around a table again together sooner rather than later!

By that time, maybe Terah will catch up to Tala on height. We were surprised to discover that they have the same shoe size currently. Growing kiddos sure do mark the passage of time!

There's a lot of love flowing through these pictures! 

All too soon we were saying goodbye!

As an aside, we returned our Skylight Calendar. It just wasn't a fit. We have repurposed the girls dry erase board and it is working great! However, sometimes what I put on it gets tampered by the littlest in the family. Yesterday, I had put "Tala leaves" with a sad face. When I came back later, this is what I found. 

Leaf raking season has come and gone!!!

Wow, a whole season of our year came and went since I last wrote. We commenced the yearly "leaf harvest" on Sunday, November 12 and finished up on Monday, November 20. We dedicated most of 5 days to the endeavor! While we can't do a lot of conversing due to how loud raking leaves can be, it's still wonderful family fun. Terah and Alida's help is sporadic, but they love to be part of it and are fabulous at the piling squishing via jumping and pushing each other into the leaves. AND (see future blog post dedicated to this!) Tala was able to join us for a lot of it!!

Sometimes when my mind is just churning with events near and far and the world feels like a chaotic, unpredictable place that I have relatively little impact on, it's really nice to throw myself into a very predictable task - remove leaves from our neighbor's yard and bring them to our leaf pile. Ah, that I can do! The progress is easy to see and celebrate (with all sorts of flips and flops!). 

We first did the raking around our place on the travel paths through the woods. We used those leaves for mulching various paths in many of our gardens. In some instances it first meant scooping the now decomposed leaf matter up onto beds before applying fresh leaves. What a satisfying job!

We also loaded the piggies up with leaf bedding...

...and tidied up a few areas where the chickens had done an extraordinary job of pulling stuff from the woods into the yard! They are so good at moving things around!

Then we shifted our attention to our neighbor's very large yard. The trees are just getting bigger over there. This is the first year we did not get all the leaves before we needed to call it quits. Last year we discovered that masking while jumping in the leaf pile saved us from a lot of lung irritation (itty bitty silver lining of Covid is that we always have a plethora of masks around). And this year, due to intense smoke from the many wildfires in our area, we wore masks most of the time for several days of raking. And, surprise surprise, we coughed a lot less while raking! 

Under the leaves we often find a lot of acorns and so we started loading the piggies up with treats. I love dumping in a bin of leaves and acorns and watching them sort the pile and crunch on the delicious morsels!

We hit a record on our final day, collecting 6 trailer loads PLUS lots of acorns. As you can see, the light was waning when we were loading up the final sheet-fulls. Each load is one massive cloth filled with leaves and then 12 sheets loaded up. We should be all set for the year - for animals, gardens and our humanure compost system.

This time if you've made it to the end of a lot of leaf pictures, you get to enjoy some of my favorite jump shots!